Request Translations Using Jobs

This article is for Account Owners and Project Managers.

The Jobs feature allows you to group and prioritize content for translation, and monitor the progress throughout completion. Jobs can be created on a file basis, or by selecting individual strings to be included in a job. You must first create a job, then authorize it to begin the translation process. If you are adding new files or strings to an existing job, you will be prompted to authorize the job again.

Create a Job

There are three ways that a job can be created within the Smarting Dashboard. Each method depends on your situation.

Method 1: Create a Job and Upload New Files

From within the Jobs page, you can create a new job and upload your new files:

Select the Jobs menu in the top navigation.

Click Request Translation. The dialog box will appear.

Upload your file(s).

Enter a name for the job.

Select a due date for your job deadline.

Add a description if necessary.

Select the languages for which you would like your job translated.

Click Confirm.

To add a file to a job for only a specific language(s), click on the job and select Files > Add File > Select languages.

Method 2: Add Existing Strings to a Job

If your strings have already been added to Smartling (for example, if you're using the Global Delivery Network), you can either add them to an existing job, or add them to a new job. To add them to a new job:

Due Date (optional): Refers to the due date for the entire project. To set due dates by workflow step, see Change Job Due Dates.

Description (optional)

Reference Number (optional)

Once you've created the job, you'll be returned to the Add Translations to a Job dialog box. Select the Move to selected job if you wish to remove the strings from the existing job and move them to the selected one. Otherwise, the strings that are currently in the job will not be added to the selected job (for the same language.)

Click Add.

Method 3: Add Existing Files to a Job

From within the Files page, you can either add existing files to a job (or upload new files and add them to a job). Only strings from files that are not already in an existing job will be added to a new job for the selected languages.

To do this:

Go to Projects (select a project) > Content > Files.

Click Upload Files and select your files.

Once your files have finished uploading, select the file(s) and click Request Translation. You'll be prompted to add your file to an existing job or add it to a new job, as well as select the desired languages for translation.

Authorize a Job and Get a Cost Estimate

When you authorize a job, you are allowing it to be sent through a translation workflow. A job requires authorization any time unauthorized content is added to it, for example, adding new files to an existing job. Content that is already in progress or completed will not be affected by this action.

To view all jobs that need authorization:

Select the Jobs menu in the top navigation.

Filter by Status > Awaiting Authorization.

From within the Status column, click Authorize. (If a job is empty, you will not see the Authorize button.) The Authorize dialog box will appear with:

Total source words: All words, across all languages.

Total weighted words: Words in each fuzzy match tier multiplied by the rate discount for that tier.

Cost Estimate: A cost estimate will automatically be generated for that job. The cost estimate takes into account the rates to which your translation vendors have agreed, any translation memory leverage, and repeated content within the project itself. (If you see a warning icon in Cost Estimate, this indicates that some rate information is missing, and you should set the rate from within the Team menu (at the top of the page).

Select the default translation workflow or choose the relevant workflows.

Click Confirm.

Refresh a Cost Estimate

There might be times where you would like to regenerate a cost estimate. Some use cases may include:

Content is removed from a job that was in progress, and you'd like to get a new cost estimate.

A job is in progress and authorized strings are added to it, and now you'd like to get a new cost estimate.

For a job that are Awaiting Authorization or In Progress, you can run a "refresh estimate" which will show the cost for all content within a job. When a refresh estimate is generated, it invalidates pre-existing estimates for that job (ie. all content, including content awaiting authorization). For example, your job has 100 words: 50 words in translation, 30 in editing, 20 that are published. The estimate will include all 100 words, broken into fuzzy buckets.

To refresh an estimate:

Select a job that's Awaiting Authorization or In Progress.

Click the Refresh link on the right hand side panel. (The refresh link is only shown once an initial cost estimate is created.)

If the content in the job changes (ie. a language is removed/added or a file is removed/added), the new estimate will automatically be created. For example, if you add a language to the job, you'll see the Weighted Words and Cost Estimate being created in the right hand side panel.

(Alternatively, if you select a job to view its details, Smartling also checks to see if there were changes made to the job after the latest estimate. If the estimate is outdated, it will be automatically refreshed at the moment that you open the job details view.)

Edit Job Name, Description, or Due Date

Select the Jobs menu in the top navigation.

Click the name of a job to show its details.

Click the job name to edit it.

On the right hand side of the page, click the Due Date, Description or Reference Number to edit the field.

View Strings

You can easily view all strings within a job.

Select the Jobs menu in the top navigation.

Click the name of the job to show its details.

On the right hand side of the page, click the Content > View Strings link.

You can search for a string by keyword and/or language(s).

Source strings are shown by default. If you select one or more languages from within the Languages drop down, you'll then see a list of strings with their associated translations.

If the string has not yet been authorized, "Not Authorized" will appear instead of a translated string. However, you can authorize all content in the job using the Authorize button from the job details or job list views.

If the string has been authorized but not yet translated, a hyphen (-) will appear instead of a translated string.

For a more detailed view of the string, click the relevant row.

At the moment, there are a couple of limitations that you should be aware of:

Entities such as &quot; &amp; are not unescaped.

Placeholders and HTML tags are displayed as plain text.

This feature is not available for Requesters.

View History

To view the history of a job, go to Jobs > select a job > select the History tab.

You'll be able to see the following:

Job creation

Status change

Content added

Content removed

Due date changes

Events are listed in descending order and aggregated by type and time. For example, let's say, during the span of 1-hour, you added 1000 strings, one by one. Smartling will group your actions using increments of 10 min: